Organizational skills usually do not rank high on a bands’ strength’s list. And that’s ok because there is usually someone available to help them through that, be it a manager, organized friend, or monthly Bandcamp sessions. Join us this weekend for the next installment of Bandcamp: BANDIZE where you’ll be shown a new tool, Bandize (http://bandize.com), that can help you organize your band from the ground up. Ajit D’Sa, Co-founder of Bandize will be on hand to give a tour of the program and to provide a workshop with bands to get them set up on the progam itself.¬† Check out the information from Ajit D’Sa about his talk:
Band Members
What is your current organization process like for your band? Chances are for most indie, self-managed bands, it’s woefully inefficient. Bandize aims to change that. By building an easy-to-use suite of tools for bands, bands can easily achieve organizational management goals easily. Schedule and keep track of every aspect of a tour, merch inventory and relases, accounting including IOUs, gig payments, and merch sales, asset management (in case your gear gets stolen while you’re out on the road!), contacts and communication, etc. Put it all in one place on the web that you can access at any time from anywhere.¬†Then once you have your gigs and/or tours set, sync them with your social networks in one step, saving you the trouble of logging in to each one and posting it there.
Bandize co-founder Ajit D’Sa, former independent band member and manager, will show you the methodologies behind Bandize and behind getting organized – truly organized. This is your true first step in realizing that your band is a small business, and that you need to start thinking like a small business owner in order to give yourself a better chance to succeed.
“The goal of Bandize was to make it easy to use, even on the road, so that the drunkest member of the band should be able to update band info at 4am after a show.”
You can keep chasing after that record deal, but Bandize will help give you a leg up when negotiating your contract with labels. Find out how and what that means.
Band Managers
Also, if you are a band manager, this session is for you as well. Bandize gives you the ability to manage multiple bands from the same account. (See http://bandize.com/multi for more.) Assign tasks to the band members. Give them a place to log gas, meals, and expenses in real time while they are on the road. Print out tour books and day sheets based on the tour information that you are already managing, right from within Bandize!
What To Bring
Whatever you use currently to keep track of your contacts, tours, gigs, accounting — bring it. Whether it’s spreadsheets, notebooks, scraps of paper, a shoebox of receipts, whatever. And bring your laptops. Bring pictures of your instruments and amps, pedals, vehicles, etc (preferably in digital format), serial numbers, receipts, paperwork, whatever. The more info the merrier.¬†During our workshop we will be actually inputting data into Bandize and getting you hooked up. By the end of it, you should never have to reference one of those pieces of paper or spreadsheets ever again!
Managing your band can be a fun collective band effort. And it should also directly increase the value of your band. It will seriously change your life.
WHAT: Bandcamp: BANDIZE – “It’s like Basecamp for bands!” (http://bandize.com)
WHO: Ajit D’Sa, Co-founder of Bandize WHEN: 8/16/09 2-4pm
WHERE: Caroline Collective, 4820 Caroline Houston TX
HOW MUCH: $5 a person / $8 per band
Regular BandCamp sessions are (usually) held on the First Sunday of every month at Caroline Collective sometime between the hours of 1pm and 5pm. Please mark your calendar accordingly for future events where we’ll all educate specific skills to musical artists such as, online/offline promotion, tour booking, financials, and recording. Please speak about this event to your colleagues, band members and other interested members of the Houston Music Community.
August 13th, 2009at 12:05 pm(#)
[...] of Caroline Collective (the physical site of Bandcamp Houston and an amazing co-working space in general) and Matthew [...]